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Tuesday, March 29, 2011

After all the work of the blog tour & getting the Jenny Pox sequel ready, I'm now in an odd lull.

I'm still slammed at the day job until April 15, and there's a lot of stuff to do around the house to get ready for the baby, but it's weird to have no writing work to do. Tommy Nightmare is away for the last beta reads and proofing. When I hear back from everyone, I'll go through it again, make any needed corrections, and upload it to Amazon, Nook and Smashwords. Then I'll contact every book blogger who liked the first Jenny Pox and send them review copies if they want.

Then that will be that. I'll be focused on the baby for a few months, and somewhere in there I'll start writing the third Jenny Pox to finish up the trilogy. I know how the third book begins, how it ends, and a good bit about the middle.

Right now, though, it's a lot of watching and waiting. I feel strongly about the quality of the book, and it's been through plenty of edits and revisions. But I've never written a sequel before, and certainly never put out a book anticipated by so many people. Will they like it? Hate it? Love it? Who knows?

I look forward to finding out...and I can't wait until the waiting is over.

Friday, March 25, 2011

I'll be announcing the blog tour grand prize winners this evening or tomorrow. Right now, I just want to ramble about some good things.

It started with Amanda Hocking - back in October, she bought Jenny Pox and liked it so much she offered to excerpt it in her novel Ascend. She was already one of the world's most successful indies, but since then she's gone on to sell a million books. As you can imagine, this has really helped me find new readers, and I constantly get emails, reviews, and Facebook and Twitter messages from people telling me they discovered my books through Amanda.

Yesterday, it was announced that she'd signed a $2 million deal with St. Martin's Press for her new series "Watersong." I know what Watersong is about, but I'm not sure if that information is public yet, so I just want to say that it's a brilliant concept, maybe the best idea I've ever heard for a paranormal romance series, and I fully expect her to find millions of new fans as a result of this deal. So congratulations to Amanda, and thanks for bringing me along on your coattails there. I can totally afford baby supplies now.

On top of this, Stacey Wallace Benefiel also discovered Jenny Pox and liked it, and offered to trade excerpts with her novel Glimpse, the first book in her very successful Zellie Wells series. We did that a couple of months ago. Soon, the third book in her series, Glow, will be available! Stacey is a wonderful writer and her books make fantastic reading.

Then I met Vicki Keire, a recovering academic who shares my love of Romantic literature. Her writing is very rich and a pleasure to read. We've just swapped excerpts, too - she put the first chapters of Jenny Pox in her wonderful book Gifts of the Blood, and you'll find Gifts excerpted in the Jenny Pox sequel, Tommy Nightmare, which comes out next month. She also beta read Tommy for me and gave some great insights that have improved the books.

Now, I also traded excerpts with Valmore Daniels, between my book Helix and his cool sf book Forbidden the Stars, but I'm not sure he'd want to be included in my "girl gang" motif here.

I really like doing this, when the books are appropriate for excerpt-trading. Any success I have is automatically shared with these other writers, and the success of Amanda, Stacey, Vicki and Valmore is obviously great for me. It gives us extra reasons to cheer for each others' progress and support each other, and removes some of the inherent loneliness from writing and from being an indie.

If you haven't tried these authors, I recommend their work, and I can vouch for them all being very nice people, too. I think it's neat to be part of a girl gang. Maybe Valmore feels the same way. :)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

It's just about time to close the evil spellbooks, pack the chains in the old trunk in the attic, and call in the exorcist—you've reached the end of The Haunted E-book Tour.

Yes, we've been talking about ghosts for two months now, but the dark days of winter are over. It's been a fun experience getting to know so many bloggers and readers, as well as doing these giveaways while trying to on the topic of ghosts for two months.

I want to thank all those who have hosted the tour, and all the readers who participated, for making this a memorable and wonderful experience that I won't repeat again unless I lose my mind. And I want to thank all the great indie authors who donated ebooks for The Haunted Library Grand Prize!

I started planning the tour back in November, with no real idea what I was doing, except that I wanted to reach out and find new people who might enjoy my writing. Since then, everything has changed. The number of people reading my books has grown tremendously, so much that I could afford beautiful new book covers from Phatpuppy Art and hire Scott Nicholson to do a full line edit on my next book, Tommy Nightmare, which comes out next month.

Tommy Nightmare is the sequel to Jenny Pox, and I plan to have it out in April, since my wife's having a baby boy in May. So I assume I’ll be busy then.

When I started putting books out on Kindle, I never imagined how far things would go and how fast they would evolve. Scott has been an important part of this journey. He edited the Jenny Pox “partial” (the first five chapters) back when I was querying lots of New York literary agents about it in late 2009, and he told me that I should look into this Kindle thing, because interesting developments were happening with ebooks.

They've turned out to be quite interesting—I now hear from readers all over the world, and lots of people have messaged me in various ways to let me know they are eager for the Jenny Pox sequel. This new book is the first one I've written with the knowledge that an audience was actually anticipating it, which makes the writing process both more exciting and a bit more challenging, too. In fact, Jenny Pox is going to be a trilogy, with the third book coming out by the fall. So, hopefully people will like that second one.

I should also thank Amanda Hocking, without whom Jenny Pox might still be a very obscure book. Also thanks to Vicki Keire for her insightful beta read of Tommy Nightmare, and her feedback definitely improved the book. As I write this, the manuscript is on its way home from Scott to me, and I expect to release Tommy Nightmare sometime in April.

In the meantime, I have some Grand Prizes to give you! Commenting on this post within seven days enters you to win one of these great prizes: The Haunted Library ebook collection, a Kindle 3 with WiFi, and a Kindle DX—the more you've commented on the tour stops, the greater your chance to be one of the three Grand Prize winners.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it looks like I have a novel to revise and hundreds of Grand Prize entries to tabulate. Thanks to everyone who’s followed the tour! I hope it has been educational and you’ve learned lots of useful information about ghosts that you can apply in your everyday life. However, I doubt it.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Today's blog tour stop at Bewitched Bookworms includes some helpful hints about preventing paranormal pests. I'm also doing the first ever giveaway of a Jenny Pox paperback with the new cover to someone who comments on today's post. Your comment also enters you to win the blog tour Grand Prizes.

Also, Little Miss Becky at Stories and Sweeties is featuring the new Jenny Pox cover as one of her Top Five Indie Covers. She also features Spiderwork by my author friend LK Rigel--and I agree, that's a beautiful cover!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Through March 12 (Saturday) you can get Jenny Pox and Helix at Smashwords for 25% off. This is part of the Smashwords "Read an Ebook Week" promotion. Buying at Smashwords means you get the ebook in every major format--Kindle, Nook, Sony and other major e-readers. So if you change e-readers in the future, you'll still own the ebooks in whatever format you need.

If you've been thinking about trying one of these books, now is a great time. Just use code RAE25 at checkout for the discount on either book (or both books). Thanks!

Phatpuppy also did the new covers for Jenny Pox and the upcoming sequel, Tommy Nightmare:

The new cover has not been added to the Jenny Pox paperback, but it will be by April, when Tommy Nightmare is released in ebook and paperback.

So if you want one of the classic, original, soon-to-be-a-rare-collector's-item Jenny Pox paperback with the "Ashleigh Goodling's Notebook" cover, you only have a couple weeks left. Then those paperbacks will no longer be produced. The new paperbacks will feature the new cover, a smaller trim size and cream paper instead of white. Wouldn't you like to own a rare early edition of Jenny Pox? :)

Friday, March 4, 2011

Today at Fishmuffins of Doom, we discuss the important issue of how to tell whether your Kindle is haunted, and some solutions to that problem.

Also...considering all the good reasons people gave me yesterday on this blog, and the fact that people are really buying The Haunted E-book and Jenny Pox like crazy today, I can go ahead and unlock the Kindle DX!

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Well, we didn't technically make to the top ten in the horror category, but the book did reach #12 in "Ghosts," which is pretty cool. Do you think I should do the Kindle DX giveaway, anyway? Tell me something the giveaway can be celebrating! :)

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Today's the day we're going to push The Haunted E-book to the top of the Kindle horror list and unlock the Kindle DX Grand Prize for the blog tour!

We're launching a Twitter campaign at NRS Vamp Chick, and I'm gifting up to 20 Kindle copies of The Haunted E-book today only. Read today's blog tour post for details, and please let other people know about the promotion today! Thanks so much for all your help, everyone!

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Tomorrow, we're going to have a very big Kindle-gifting giveaway at NRS Vamp Chick, and we'll try to unlock the Kindle DX Grand Prize for the blog tour. The giveaway will be tomorrow only, so be sure to stop by!